Education System Resilience

This scoping study working paper has been commissioned by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), a joint endeavour with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), to inform its new initiative on education system resilience in GPE partner countries. The paper presents the concept of education system resilience (ESR) as found in the literature and explores understandings and implementation of ESR within policies and plans for a selected group of GPE partner countries. The paper begins with an introduction to the topic, presentation of research questions, and a brief methodology. In the next section, the literature review summarises the broad range of conceptualisations of ESR as found in academic literature and in documentation primarily from international development stakeholders; that background provides a basis for a proposed emerging framework to capture the breadth and detail of what is understood as ESR. In the section that follows, we present data from ten GPE partner countries, including policy review and key informant interviews, which is mapped onto the emerging framework in order to explore how countries understand ESR and to examine the policies and practices in place for system strengthening, and as a way to anticipate, plan, and prevent and mitigate future crises. The paper concludes with a summary of key findings and potential areas for research based on the data collected.